In the News (Wed 4 Mar 15)

Cyrus was an able soldier and a great statesman and he was also a merciful king, one of his deeds was to grant the Jews to return from their exile in Babylon to their home land in Israel and rebuild the temple of Solomon.

Darius the great (reigned 522 to 486 BCE.) was the son of the noble Hystaspes who was the satrap of Parthia and a member of royal family and Achaemenid dynasty.

Darius II (reigned 425 to 405 BCE.), as soon as he became the king, he was able to put down some rebellions that have been going on.

Nothing further is recorded of the Edomites in the Tanakh until their defeat by King Saul of Israel in the late 1000's BCE.

Edom is mentioned in Assyrian cuneiform inscriptions in the form "Udumi" or "Udumu"; three of its kings are known from the same source: Ḳaus-malaka at the time of Tiglath-pileser III (c.

Recently, however, excavations such as the 2004-2004 UCSD dig at Khirbat an-Nahas in Jordan have shed new light on the history of Edom, unearthing artifacts and evidence of settled state society as early as the tenth century BCE,1 2), although whether and to what extent these sites reflect Edomite statehood is debated.

In 720 BCE, Sargon II recaptured what was left of Samaria and sent much of its remaining population into exile.

It is from this period of conquest that the tradition of the 10 lost tribes of Israel arose.

Marching through the Coastal Plain in 332 BCE, the Roman historian Flavius Josephus claims that Alexander actually visited the backwater town of Jerusalem to settle a dispute between the Jews and an offshoot group known as the Samaritans.

The nation itself was formed as the Israelites left the Land of Goshen, Egypt during the Exodus at an uncertain date, often considered to be in the late 13th centuryBCE.

Around 1050 BCE, the twelve tribes of Israel united to form the Kingdom of Israel.

Following Solomon's death, tensions between the northern part of Israel, containing the ten northern tribes, and the southern section, dominated by Jerusalem and the southern tribes, increased, and in 920 BCE, Israel split into two kingdoms: Israel in the north and Judah in the south.

Around 1030-1020 BCE (chronology varies), the children of the patriarch Jacob (Israel) united to form the Kingdom of Israel.

Following Solomon's death, tensions between the northern part of Israel, containing the ten northern tribes, and the southern section, dominated by Jerusalem and the southern tribes, increased, and around 920 BCE, Israel split into two kingdoms: Israel in the north and Judah in the south.

This is based on an inscription on The Black Obelisk of Shalmaneser III showing "Yaua" son of Omri paying tribute, dated to 841 BCE.

Already in 139 BCE the Jews of Rome were charged by the praetor (civil administrator) with attempting to contaminate Roman morals with their religion, presumably an allusion to proselytism.

In a work on the analogical interpretation of the Law of Moses, Aristobulus in the 2nd centuryBCE anticipated Philo in attempting to harmonize Greek philosophy and the Torah, in using the method of allegory to explain anthropomorphisms in the Bible, and in asserting that the Greek philosophers were indebted to Moses.

The Wisdom of Solomon, dating from the 1st centuryBCE, shows an acquaintance with the Platonic doctrine of the preexistence of the soul and with a method of argument known as sorites that was favoured by the Stoics (Greek philosophers).

Beginning in the eighth centuryBCE and with the rise of the Assyrian empire, there was an urbanization of ancient Israel.

The influence of the royal family continued to the end of the sixth centuryBCE (e.g., Zechariah, Haggai, Ezra 1-6), but the role of the royal family in the formation of biblical text seems to disappear along with Zerubabbel by the end of the sixth century.

According to archaeologists (e.g., Carter, 1999), the province of Yehud was largely depopulated and impoverished in the Persian period.

Some scholars have suggested that Daniel was written about 165 BCE in the days of Antiochus Epihanes IV who ruled over Syria and who set up a Greek god in the Temple at Jerusalem for the Jews to worship.

Below, a Greek vase painting of the 5th centuryBCE (the Persian Period) showing the Grain-god Triptolemos riding a chariot which is self-propelled with winged wheels ca.

The scene is described as King Sargon II (reigned circa 722-705 BCE) with his son the Crown Prince Sennacherib adoring the Assyrian god Asshur who stands atop a dais.

1900 BCE: The Near East - The Epic of Gilgamesh is redacted from Sumerian sources and written in the semetic language.

Around the same time, he writes his Code of Laws containing 282 rules including the principles of "an eye for an eye" and "let the buyer beware." It is one of the first codes of law in world history, predated only by the Laws of Lipit-Ishtar.

They appeal to the Roman Pompey in 63 BCE who intervenes, thereby beginning the Roman occupation of Palestine.

BCE (Before the Common Era) is equivalent to, but used here in preference to, BC (Before Christ).

Dendrochronological dating of timbers from an Aegean shipwreck containing a gold scarab of Queen Nefertiti seem to show that she was queen by about 1316 BCE, or at least no later than a date between 1316 and the year the ship sank.

home.flash.net /~hoselton/deadsea/timeline.htm (10345 words)

hezekiahvssennacherib(Site not responding. Last check: 2007-10-31)

Another internal "marker" suggests 681 BCE OR LATER based on the mention of Esarhaddon succeeding his father, Sennacherib, upon the latter's assassination by his two sons (Isa 37:3-38).

540 BCE as he describes Cyrus about to take Babylon in that year. I suspect that the whole Book of Isaiah was probably written by Deutero-Isaiah, but that he probably had access to the "failed prophecies" of the 8th centuryBCE Isaiah and incorporated them in a different format.

Thus the Book of Isaiah's account of Jerusalem's being spared by God's personal destruction of the Assyrian army could have been concocted in 540 BCE with no one around to contradict its portrayal of the events, no one that is, except the royal Assyrian archives of Sennacherib, which reveal the "more probable" events.

The prophecy of Micah (8th centuryBCE), also a Judahite, was contemporary with that of Isaiah and touched on similar themes (e.g., the vision of universal peace is found in both their books).

Hezekiah was the leading figure in a western coalition of states that coordinated a rebellion against the Assyrian king Sennacherib with the Babylonian rebel Merodach-Baladan, shortly after the Assyrian's accession in 705BCE.

The idea was destined to play a decisive role in the self-understanding of the Jewish martyrs of the Syrian king Antiochus IV Epiphanes' persecution in the 2nd centuryBCE (in, for example, Daniel) and later again in the Christian appreciation of the death of Jesus.

Nothing further is recorded of the Edomites in the Bible until their defeat by King Saul of Israel in the late 1000's BCE; forty years later King David and his general Joab defeated the Edomites in the "valley of salt," (probably near the Dead Sea) (II Sam.

During the revolt of the Maccabees against the Seleucid kingdom, a Seleucid general named Gorgias is referred to as "Governor of Idumaea"; whether he was a Greek or a Hellenized Edomite is unknown (II Maccabees 12:32), and some scholars maintain that the reference to Idumaea in that passage is an error altogether.

125 BCE), by whom they were forced to observe Jewish rites and laws (ib.

www.quaest.io /?title=Edom (1786 words)

ExodusProblems(Site not responding. Last check: 2007-10-31)

In the 12th centuryBCE Israel in Iron IA is settling the Hill Country of Canaan under Joshua.

The first event is the Hyksos expulsion of circa 1540 BCE, the second event is a Ramesside expulsion as preserved by the Hellenistic era Egyptian priest called Manetho who wrote a history of Egypt for his Ptolemaic Greek overlords in the 3rd centuryBCE.

In all cases, 1540, 1446 or 1250 BCE, there is no Sihon the Amorite at Heshbon (Tell Hesban) to hinder the Israelite advance on Canaan via the plains of Jericho, Heshbon not being settled until after 1200 BCE according to the archaeological record.

Historians know very little about the Iranian culture under the Median dynasty, except that Zoroastrianism as well as a polytheistic religion was practiced, and a priestly caste called the Magi existed.

Beginning about 835 BCE the Median tribes became subject intermittently to the kings of Assyria.

About 715 BCE the Median chieftain Dayaukku, known to the Greek historian Herodotus as Deïoces, led the Iranians in an unsuccessful rebellion against the Assyrian king Sargon II (reigned 722-705 BCE).

www.cais-soas.com /CAIS/History/madha/medes.htm (377 words)

Assyrian, Babylonian and Israelite History 8th Century - The Kings Calendar(Site not responding. Last check: 2007-10-31)

Part of academic confusion over this particular period of Israelite history, results directly from reliance upon the biblical narratives which clearly state that it was King Ahaz of Judah who appealed to Tiglath-Pileser III of Assyria for assistance, during the Syro-Ephraimitic War against Rezin of Damascus, and Pekah of Israel.

Tiglath-Pileser's 734-732 BCE campaign did result in the destruction of Damascus, the death of Rezin, and a dynastic change in Israel, yet the 'Kings Calendar' chronological synchronisms preclude Ahaz from being the Judean King who appealed to Tiglath-Pileser.

Whilst academic 'anti Biblical' sentiment might for the most part be responsible for the general failure to unravel the particulars of the Chronological History of Israel, in truth, the real reason is that no one has ever been able to 'go outside their academic box' to explore possibilities.

During the revolt of the Maccabees against the Seleucid kingdom, a Seleucid general named Gorgias is referred to as "Governor of Idumaea"; whether he was a Greek or a Hellenized Edomite is unknown (II Maccabees 12:32).

Recently, however, excavations such as the 2004-2004 UCSD dig at Khirbat an-Nahas in Jordan have shed new light on the history of Edom, unearthing artifacts and evidence of settled state society as early as the thirteenth through the tenth centuriesBCE.

Fundamentalists have predictably seized on this new evidence to "prove" the total reliability of the Bible as history.

This section describes the co-ordinated revolts of the Judean King Hezekiah and the Babylonian King Merodach-baladan against the Assyrians on the occasion of the death of the Assyrian King Sargon II in 705BCE through the seige of Jerusalem by the Assyrian king Sennacherib in 701 BCE.

Written in the second half of the second centuryBCE, the first book of Maccabees is a detailed account of the history of Judah from the accession of Antiochus IV in 175 B.C.E. to the death of Simon in 134 B.C.E. Thus the book describes the history of the Maccabean revolt.

Nebuchadnezzar had campaigned in Syro-Palestine late in the seventh centuryB.C.E. It is possible that the figures of Holofernes and his colleague Bagoas are memories of Orophernes and Bagoas who were generals in the campaign of the Persian king Artaxerxes III Orchus (359-338) against Phoenicia and Egypt.

In the histories of Egypt and Mesopotamia, developing near the beginning of the first millennium BCE, both empires go into decline, allowing the minor kingdoms of the east Mediterranean littoral to flourish independently for three or four hundred years (ca.

445 BCE), Nehemiah used the rest of his initial term as governor and a second some years later to implement important economic, political, and religious reforms; these measures were consistent with Persian imperial interests but they also enforced provisions of the polity that Ezra had previously established" (McBride 1988:21-22).